What the New CQC Assessment Framework Means for Registered Managers in Adult Social Care
Last updated: March 2026·Reading time: 11 minutes·Category: CQC & Regulation
CQC published its March 2026 update confirming a move away from the Single Assessment Framework toward sector-specific frameworks. For adult social care, that means KLOEs are returning, rating characteristics are back, and scoring is being removed. This article explains what is actually changing, what is not, and what it means for how you lead.
In March 2026, CQC confirmed it is moving away from the Single Assessment Framework toward four separate, sector-specific frameworks — one for adult social care, one for mental health care, one for primary care and community services, and one for hospitals.
The consultation that preceded this, Better Regulation, Better Care, received overwhelming support for this direction. CQC has now published a draft adult social care assessment framework and is asking providers, professionals and people who use services for feedback before piloting begins this summer.
The five key questions — Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive, Well-Led — remain unchanged. What returns alongside them are two things that many experienced registered managers will recognise: key lines of enquiry, framed as structured questions that describe what CQC will look for during assessments; and rating characteristics, which describe what Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement and Inadequate care looks like in each sector.
Scoring is being removed. Rating judgements will be made directly at key question level.
The deadline for submitting feedback on the draft framework is 12 June 2026.
The Single Assessment Framework, introduced in 2023, replaced the previous system of KLOEs and characteristics with quality statements and evidence categories. The intention was a more flexible, evidence-led model. In practice, it introduced significant ambiguity — particularly around how ratings were determined and what providers needed to demonstrate.
The draft framework signals a deliberate step back from that approach.
KLOEs return as structured questions. For adult social care, they sit under each of the five key questions and describe specific areas inspectors will examine. Under Safe alone, the draft includes seven lines of enquiry — covering safety culture, risk management, safeguarding, safe environments, safe staffing, medicines management, and systems for safe transitions between services.
Rating characteristics return as concrete descriptions of what each rating level looks like in practice. The draft framework provides side-by-side descriptions of Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement and Inadequate for every line of enquiry across all five key questions.
For registered managers who have found the SAF difficult to interpret, this is significant. The question “what does Good actually look like here?” has a written answer again. The standard is visible.
Scoring is also removed. Rather than aggregating evidence scores into a rating, CQC will make judgement calls directly at key question level. This reduces the mechanical element of the previous model and places more emphasis on the overall picture of a service — which, arguably, is closer to how assessment always worked in practice.
Here is the thing that should anchor how you respond to all of this.
The regulations do not change.
The Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 are not being revised. Regulation 17 on good governance, Regulation 18 on staffing, Regulation 9 on person-centred care — these remain exactly as they are. The fundamental standards remain. The legal framework within which you operate as a registered manager is unchanged.
What changes is the lens CQC uses to assess how well you are meeting those requirements. That lens has changed before and will change again. The SAF replaced KLOEs. KLOEs are now returning in a new form. Whatever comes after this framework will share the same underlying expectations, because those expectations are grounded in the regulations — and the regulations do not shift with inspection methodology.
Registered managers who understand what the regulations actually require, and build their leadership and governance around that, find that each framework shift asks for relatively little adjustment. They are already doing what the regulator is looking for. The language changes. The evidence base does not.
What has changed
What has not changed
Single Assessment Framework replaced
The five key questions: Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive, Well-Led
Quality statements replaced with KLOEs
The Health and Social Care Act regulations
Scoring removed from methodology
CQC’s right to inspect, rate and take action
Generic framework replaced with sector-specific frameworks
The expectation that services are well-led, safe and person-centred
Why KLOEs and Rating Characteristics Are Good News for Registered Managers
There is a practical point here that is easy to miss in the noise around framework changes.
The return of structured lines of enquiry and rating characteristics is, for most registered managers, a clarification — not a complication.
Under the SAF, many providers found it difficult to know precisely what inspectors were looking for at a given rating level. Quality statements described the intent but left a significant interpretive gap. The evidence categories were broad. The connection between what a service was doing and the rating it would receive was not always transparent.
The draft framework closes that gap.
If you want to understand what a Good rating for Safe Staffing looks like in adult social care, the draft framework tells you directly: thorough and safe recruitment practices, appropriate staffing levels and skill mix, effective induction and supervision, poor performance managed appropriately. It goes on to describe what Outstanding looks like above that, and what Requires Improvement and Inadequate look like below it.
That is specific. It is actionable. And it is honest about the difference between rating levels in a way that a single standard often is not.
The rating characteristics in the draft framework are not a checklist. They describe a quality of practice — a way of leading, a culture, a consistency of approach. But they give you something concrete to work with, which is more than many registered managers have had for the last two years.
For registered managers who are already doing good work, this is an opportunity to map what they have to a framework that is clearer than the one it replaces. For those who have been uncertain about where they stand, it provides a starting point that is genuinely useful.
Every time the regulatory framework shifts, registered managers face a choice about how to respond.
The reactive response is to study the new framework in detail, identify what appears to be different, and adjust systems, policies and documentation accordingly. This is understandable. It is also where a disproportionate amount of management time tends to disappear — time spent translating language rather than improving practice.
The more useful response is to ask a different question: not what does the new framework say, but what does it reveal about whether my leadership is actually working?
Reading the draft framework carefully — particularly the rating characteristics — surfaces something important. The descriptors for Outstanding and Good are not primarily about systems and documentation. They are about culture. They describe a service where safety is a shared priority, not a compliance exercise. Where staff are genuinely supported, not just supervised. Where people’s voices actually shape how care is delivered, not just appear in feedback forms. Where leaders are visible, curious and honest about what they do not know.
Those are leadership qualities. They are not produced by policies. They develop through how a leader reads the evidence in front of them, what they ask, what they observe, and how they act on what they find.
A registered manager who understands what the regulations actually require, and has built their governance around genuinely knowing what is happening in their service, will recognise the rating characteristics as a description of what they are already trying to do. Not as a new set of demands to meet.
How RAOF™ Keeps You Grounded When Frameworks Shift
One of the challenges registered managers face is that frameworks change but the daily work does not pause. Inspections still happen. Staff still need leading. People still need high-quality care. There is no natural moment to stop and reorient.
RAOF™ — Read, Ask, Observe, Feedforward — is the framework Carevia is built on. It is designed for exactly this kind of environment. Not built around what CQC is looking for this year. Built around how leaders know what is actually happening in the service they are responsible for.
R
Read
Gather evidence from the records, data and systems already in place. Not checking compliance. Genuinely reading for what the information tells you about the quality of care being delivered — including what is not being captured and why.
A
Ask
Seek the perspective of the people closest to the care — staff, the people you support, families. Not performance management. Inquiry. What are you noticing? What is making this difficult? What do you know that I need to know?
O
Observe
Be present in the service in a way that is neither performative nor threatening. Not arriving with a clipboard to verify compliance. Being present enough to see what the records cannot show you — the rhythm of a shift, the small moments between tasks, how staff actually respond when something unexpected happens.
F
Feedforward
Act on what Read, Ask and Observe have revealed. Not just noting concerns — setting direction. What needs to change? What needs to be sustained? What does the next period look like in light of what you now know?
When a framework changes, RAOF™ does not change. It keeps working. That remains the question, regardless of what the framework says.
The Carevia Pro+ Time Planner embeds RAOF™ reflection blocks into your working week, helping you maintain this cycle as a leadership practice rather than an occasional exercise.
There is no urgency to overhaul your systems. The framework is in draft. Piloting is expected this summer. A final version will follow. What there is value in doing now:
1
Read the draft framework
Specifically, read the rating characteristics for the five key questions. Not to build a checklist — to understand what the level above where you currently are looks like, and whether the gap is a systems gap or a leadership culture gap.
2
Submit feedback
The consultation closes 12 June. CQC has explicitly invited views from providers on whether the draft will help them understand what inspectors are looking for. This is a genuine opportunity to shape a framework that will affect how your service is assessed.
3
Anchor governance to the regulations, not the framework
Review whether your current quality assurance activity is genuinely telling you what is happening in your service — or whether it is telling you that processes are being followed. Those are different things.
4
Keep leading
Not reacting. Keep asking the questions that any framework is ultimately trying to get at: are the people in your service safe, cared for well, and receiving the support they need to live the life they choose? The framework is a description of that. Your leadership is how it becomes real.
Put the principles in this article into practice — with tools built for registered managers in adult social care
Carevia Pro gives registered managers and quality leads access to the Inspection Readiness Dashboard, governance and assurance planning tools, the RAOF™ Time Planner, and a growing library of inspection-ready resources. Pro+ adds Ask Carevia+ — your always-available virtual quality partner.
Inspection Readiness Dashboard — self-assess across all five CQC key questions (Pro+)
RAOF™ Time Planner — embed leadership reflection into your working week (Pro+)
Governance and Assurance Schedule Planner — structured oversight built into the year
Ask Carevia+ — sense-check decisions, explore evidence and prepare for inspection
Not immediately. The framework is in draft and piloting is expected from summer 2026. Your current rating remains based on the Single Assessment Framework until CQC formally transitions to the new approach. When it does, ratings will be determined using the new rating characteristics and key lines of enquiry.
No. The draft framework describes what inspectors will look for, not new legal requirements on providers. The regulations your service is required to meet remain unchanged. Updating policies to reference a draft framework before it is finalised is not a productive use of your time at this stage.
The draft KLOEs are framed as structured questions and are accompanied by detailed rating characteristics for each level — Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement and Inadequate. This is more explicit than the previous KLOE format, which relied heavily on prompts rather than descriptions. The coverage has also been developed specifically for adult social care, rather than applying across all sectors.
The quality statements introduced under the Single Assessment Framework are being replaced by key lines of enquiry in the new sector-specific frameworks. The five key questions remain, but the evidence structure beneath them is changing. The rating characteristics serve a similar purpose — describing what good practice looks like — but at a more specific and actionable level.
The draft adult social care assessment framework is published on the CQC website alongside the current consultation. Feedback can be submitted via CQC’s online participation site. The consultation closes 12 June 2026. Visit cqc.org.uk for the full details.
The Carevia Inspection Readiness Dashboard (Pro+) allows you to self-assess across all five CQC key questions with RAG status tracking and governance sign-off. Reading the rating characteristics in the draft framework alongside your own service evidence is a practical starting point. Focus first on the key questions where you have least confidence — then use the characteristics to identify whether what you are doing matches the description of Good.
